Effects Of Testosterone On Post-Myocardial Infarction Left Ventricular Function And Cytokines In Male Rats

Objectives and background: Chronic heart failure (CHF) is a progressive and fatal heterogeneous syndrome. It is a severe stage of all kinds of heart disease. The global prevalence of CHF is estimated to be as high as 1.1-1.9%. The mortality of CHF is even higher than that of malignant tumor. The mainstay of current therapy includes diuretics, vasodilators and inotropic agents, in addition to neuro-hormonal manipulations such as angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors, beta-blockers and aldosterone receptor antagonist. These drugs improve the clinical symptoms, elevate the LVEF (left ventricular ejection fraction) and reduce mortality and hospitalization in some degree. However, even though the patients with advanced heart failure (NYHA class III or IV) could be treated perfectly, the mortality of them in one year is still as high as 26% and 42%, respectively. Moreover, only therapy offering long-term survival is cardiac transplantation, which remains limited by lack of donors and recipient suitability. Therefore, there remains a need for therapies which alleviate the suffering associated with CHF, as well as reducing mortality.Recently, many studies about CHF focus on the cytokine network of immunopathogenesis. Serum level of proinflammatory cytokine such as TNF-a in CHF patients is increased and serum level of anti-inflammatory cytokine such as IL-10 is decreased, which cause inflammatory imbalance .This imbalance may result in decreased heart contractility, ventricular dilation, myocardial remodeling, increased cardiac myocyte apoptosis, skeletal muscle atrophy and cardiac cachexia, and serum TNF-a level is an independent predictor of mortality in patients with advanced heart...